Ariano Suassuna

Ariano Suassuna (born June 16, 1927, João Pessoa, Brazil—died July 23, 2014, Recife, Brazil) was a Brazilian dramatist and fiction writer, the prime mover in the Movimento Armorial (“Armorial Movement”) in northeastern Brazil, an intellectual and folkloric group devoted to the discovery and re-creation of the historic roots of Luso-Brazilian culture in that region.

A professor of aesthetics and theory of the theatre, Suassuna became involved in both the craft of writing plays and the administration of theatrical groups. He was a founder of the Student Theatre at the Federal University of Pernambuco and was appointed director of the centre of cultural education there.

Suassuna rehabilitated the medieval Iberian auto (morality or mystery play) as a viable theatrical form for use on the 20th-century stage in such works as Auto da Compadecida (published 1957; “Play of Our Lady of Mercy”; English translation The Rogues’ Trial), Auto de João da Cruz (1950; “Play of John of the Cross”), and others. He drew on the tradition established by Gil Vicente in 16th-century Portugal for many of his plays, including Uma mulher vestida de sol (1947; “A Woman Dressed in Sunshine”), Cantam as harpas de Sião (1948; “The Harps of Zion Sing”), and Farça da boa preguiça (1960; “Farce of Good Laziness”). His O santo e a porca (1957; “The Saint and the Sow”) is a reworking of Roman writer Plautus’s Aulularia. He also borrowed elements of puppet theatre in plays such as A pena e a lei (1959; “The Punishment and the Law”) and drew widely on northeastern Brazil’s popular poetry and musical forms in the creation of a kind of “circus theatre.”

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Suassuna published one novel, following tenets of the Movimento Armorial, Romance d’a Pedra do reino e o príncipe do sangue do vai-e-volta (1971; “Romance of the Stone of the Kingdom and the Prince of Coming-and-Going Blood”), which incorporates elements of Portuguese traditions, still extant in northeastern Brazil, surrounding the belief that King Sebastian of Portugal would return to save his country from Spanish rule.